Soviet relics feel the pain as Russian crisis deepens

Luke Harding reports from Dushanbe in Tajikistan on how Moscow's recession has seen the sacking of thousands of guest workers from the central Asian republics. Now they are going home to poverty - and their governments are under threat

A mother and her children beg in a pedestrian underpass as a picture of Tajik President Emomali Rakhmonov is featured on a building in Dushanbe Photograph: Vyacheslav Oseledko/AFP/Getty Images

Until last month, Zafar Kasimov was working in a cement factory in St Petersburg. Now, however, he is back home from Russia and scraping a living in Tajikistan, central Asia's most hard-up nation. "My Russian boss told me there was no more work," Zafar, 26, said. "I used to earn 10,000 roubles a month (£230). Now that's finished. I've come back because of the crisis."

Instead of lugging heavy sacks of sand and cement, Zafar now works at a roadside stall in the mountains above Tajikistan's capital, Dushanbe. Under a blue-and-white awning, he serves plates of fried wild mushrooms to passing drivers. The scenery is enthralling - green pasture and fresh alpine air. But the pay, Zafar concedes, is terrible. "There are no jobs here," he says.

Zafar's grim predicament is repeated across the other former Soviet republics of central Asia, where hundreds of thousands of migrant labourers working in Russia have suddenly found themselves without a job. The economic crisis - blamed by the Kremlin on Washington - has had a withering effect on Russia's labour market, hitting not only its former billionaire oligarchs, now down to their last $100m, but also its poor migrant underclass.

Worst affected has been Russia's once booming building industry. Construction of hotels, blocks of flats and private dachas in Moscow's pine-forested suburbs has virtually halted, as developers find themselves out of credit and cash. Migrant workers who used to earn $500 a month on Russian building sites are now going home - or, in some cases, remain stuck in Moscow and other Russian cities after being ripped off by unscrupulous companies that refuse to pay their wages.

"My husband hasn't been paid," Firuza Sangava, 39, told the Observer last week from Tajikistan. "He says they keep on promising him the money, but never give it." Sangava's husband, Saimurad, 43, has spent the past five months working as an electrician in Moscow, close to Red Square and Lenin's tomb. Recently, she says, he has been unable to send her any money to feed their six daughters. "He says that, if they don't pay him in the next two months, he'll come back."

So severe is the crisis that some women are being forced into desperate measures, Firuza admits, including cheating on their husbands. Her own earnings as a waitress at a village cafe in Faizalia - on the road south between Dushanbe and Afghanistan - amount to five somoni, or 95p a day. "Some women put up with it, the separation. But others are forced to take a lover," she says.

The number of migrant workers from central Asia working in Russia is vast. At least 1m Tajiks are employed in Russian towns and cities - some 60 per cent of the small country's entire workforce. Other nations supplying low-wage guest workers include Uzbekistan, with 3m workers, and Kyrgyzstan with 500,000. Typically, migrants are young men, some still in their teens, who work as labourers, taxi drivers, street sweepers, or are employed in factories or markets. Some young women also seek work.

Even before the crisis, Tajikistan was the poorest country in central Asia. Now, its unreformed, Soviet-style economy faces collapse. In 2008 Tajik migrants working in Russia sent back $2.5bn in remittances, according to IMF figures - almost half of the country's entire GDP. (Some experts put the real figure at $5bn.) And unlike comparatively affluent Kazakhstan, which is also now suffering, Tajikistan has no oil or gas reserves.

The question now is whether disgruntled migrants returning home will pose a threat to a region already facing instability, unrest and other social problems. The entire post-Soviet area is in the grip of various crises. To the west, Ukraine is facing political paralysis and a vicious power struggle between the country's president, Viktor Yushchenko, and its populist prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko.

Last week, meanwhile, neighbouring Moldova - a poor, post-Soviet micro-state wedged between Ukraine and Romania - exploded with violent student protests against the country's corrupt Communist party rulers. Then there are the Baltic states. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have all been badly affected by the economic crisis following years of rapid growth and integration with the European Union. All three have difficult relations with Russia, aggravated by the Russian ethnic minorities inside their borders.

Farther south is Georgia, whose pro-western president, Mikheil Saakashvili, faces growing domestic unpopularity, street protests from opposition parties which want him to resign, and increasingly lukewarm support from his western backers. All these crises are partly existential - prompted by questions of identity, and whether post-Soviet countries should swap their traditional ally Russia for the west. Ultimately, though, their deepest problems are economic.

Paradoxically the most stable post-Soviet regimes are all in central Asia, a vast region of mountain and steppe that has once again become logistically crucial in attempts by the Obama White House to defeat the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan. Most observers, however, believe the region's rulers including Tajikistan's autocratic leader, Imomali Rakhmanov, are ill-equipped to deal with the challenges the crisis is throwing their way.

Since last year, as migrants have come back, crime, suicide and murder rates in Tajikistan have all risen dramatically, especially in the north. Most sociologists, however, believe there is little prospect of angry mobs rampaging down Dushanbe's tree-lined boulevards, or storming the president's handsome neo-classical palace, with its tasteful fountains and Ruritanian-looking guards.

"We don't have a revolutionary situation here so far," Parviz Mullajanov, an expert in international relations in Dushanbe said last week. "In reality, it's a long process. Not all migrants who come home will be unemployed. Some will return to Russia and others will go to Arab countries. The government still has time to do something." He predicted, however: "Unless it acts urgently, there will be social unrest."

Mullajanov says efforts to deal with the crisis are hindered by the inflexible, authoritarian nature of central Asia's five states - Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. "The regimes are super-presidential. There is a president. Around the president is a family and close allies. Then there is the rest of society and a powerful law enforcement system." He predicts further repression: "To maintain power the regimes have to rely more and more on their law enforcement bodies."

Others go further. In a recent report the International Crisis Group described Tajikistan's "domestic realities" as "messy" and warned that the country was "edging ever closer to failed nation status". It also noted Tajikistan's dire power shortages, which this winter left much of the countryside with no more than two hours of electricity a day and even saw eight-hour blackouts in Dushanbe, home to the country's Russian-speaking elite.

"There is no sign that the Tajik government has the faintest idea how to address these problems," the report said. It listed some of Tajikistan's other problems: widespread corruption, abject poverty, rising unemployment, and a lack of succession strategy in the unlikely event that the president - apparently in the job for life and surrounded by rival family members - decides to step down.

Most citizens, however, appear reluctant to embrace radical protest. They appear to associate opposition movements with Tajikistan's disastrous 1992-97 civil war, a vicious intra-regional struggle that left 60,000 people dead and more than a million homeless. The country's opposition remains feeble and marginalised. Most people enjoying Tajikistan's warm spring sunshine last week, drinking cups of green tea in pleasant outdoor cafes, apparently prefer a quiet life.

At Dushanbe's sleepy railway station, fewer tickets are now being sold for the 4,267km journey to Moscow, a transnational slog taking four days. But despite the crisis, many Tajiks say they still plan to return to Russia, and say they have little alternative but to try to find a job outside their own country.

"I want to go back to Russia," Makhmud Ali, 43, said, then added jokingly: "For us, Tajikistan is like a Swiss sanatorium. It's somewhere you go to have a rest." Ali, who builds dachas for rich Russian clients, admits that times are now tough. But he says he is still confident he can earn $7,800 in five months in Russia - a fortune by Tajik standards, where wages for teachers and doctors can be as low as $30 a month. Not only that, but Tajiks liked Russia, he said - unlike the United States. "We revere the Russians," he said, adding: "We don't need the US, just Russia and Iran."

With the Russian economy in serious trouble, meanwhile, Tajikistan has been looking to develop friends elsewhere. In March, President Rakhmanov dropped into Iran and Turkey, two potential sources of investment and cash during troubled economic times. Recently there has even been detente between Tajikistan and next-door Uzbekistan, following years of rivalry over land, water and energy resources, with direct flights between the two capitals starting this month.

Back in the mountains, Zafar Kasimov says he is not too bitter about losing his job and coming home. The only memento from his five months in Russia is a T-shirt with the word "Sochi" on it - Russia's Olympic Black Sea resort. Sniffing the mountain air, Zafar reflected: "It's better here than there. I wanted to come back. I hadn't seen my wife for six months. At the end of the day, Tajikistan is my home."

Crisis in post-Soviet land

Moldova

Leader: President Vladimir VoroninProblem: Moldova saw violent protests last week when students stormed the parliament building in protest at the ruling Communist party's election victory last Sunday. The poorest country in Europe, Moldova is beset by profound economic problems, ethnic tensions and divisions between those who believe that Moldova's future lies with Romania and Europe or Russia.

Ukraine

Leader: President Viktor YushchenkoProblem: Yushchenko is locked in a power struggle with the prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, pictured together right. Their rivalry ahead of elections, scheduled for later this year, has paralysed government at a time when Ukraine is sliding towards bankruptcy and default. Relations with Russia are also dire following January's gas war.

Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia

Leader: Valdis Dombrovskis (Latvian PM), Andrius Kubilius (Lithuanian PM), Andrus Ansip (Estonian PM)Problem: All three of the ex-Soviet Baltic republics are now suffering tough economic times after years of spectacular GDP growth and successful integration in 2004 with the European Union. Poor relations with Moscow and the presence of Russian-speaking minorities have fuelled social unrest, including riots in Estonia's capital, Tallinn, in 2007.

Tajikistan

Leader: President Imomali RakhmanovProblem: Tajikistan's economy has been severely affected by the global crisis as remittances from migrant workers employed in Russia have dried up. Already the poorest country in Central Asia, it faces the prospect of social unrest as frustrated jobless migrants return home. In winter most of the country has no electricity.

Kyrgyztan

Leader: President Kurmanbek BakiyevProblem: Once the freest ex-Soviet republic in Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan is now reverting to its old autocratic ways. Last month President Bakiyev agreed on a backroom deal with Russia, which saw Kyrgyzstan close down an American base in exchange for a $2bn handout from the Kremlin. Most of the democratic gains of the 2005 Tulip Revolution have now vanished.

Uzbekistan

Leader: President Islam KarimovProblem: Uzbekistan's corrupt and repressive government now serious faces economic problems. Some three million Uzbeks are employed in neighbouring Russia, where the building industry and other key sectors are near to collapse. Karimov has managed his survival by playing Russia and the United States off against each other.

Georgia

Leader: President Mikheil SaakashviliProblem: About 60,000 demonstrators took to the streets on Thursday and 25,000 on Friday, pictured left, demanding Saakashvili's resignation. Opposition to his rule has grown rapidly since his ill-fated attempts last summer to win back the breakaway republic of South Ossetia ended in war with Russia. Georgia's western allies are also cooling on the president.